Step 7: Glaze Cut Fruit

Step 8: Package and Bestow (or Eat)

Keep everything covered in the fridge until you're ready to go. I bought this cake box from a local bakery. It was deep, so I made a shelf using pie...

For the birthday of a particularly special sushi aficionado, I conceived these sushi-shaped cake treats. My initial search for inspiration turned up sushi-shaped candy, which did not appeal to me, and sushi-inspired cupcakes, which were not realistic enough for my taste - too much larger than real sushi, and with that inedible wrapper in the way. I therefore embarked on my mission armed only with a vision of cake so sushi-like that it would invite double-takes. I didn't quite get them that realistic, but I'm frankly quite pleased with the results, and they are mighty delicious.

They are time-consuming and require a lot of steps which I spread over about two days, but the reception they got made it worth every minute. This instructable will tell you how I made them.

Step 1: Planning & Ingredients

The edibles:

1. Cake. You will need a sheet cake, which I made using King Arthur Flour's Elegant White Cake recipe, with the only change being the substitution of virgin coconut oil (which I had in the pantry) for the vegetable shortening (which I think is gross). I don't buy cake flour, but make it like this with much success.

2. Pastry cream (or frosting). Since my cake recipe calls for five egg whites, I elected to make pastry cream (instead of frosting), which requires five yolks. The Brown-Eyed Baker's recipe is excellent and hasn't failed me yet. Pastry cream is super fun to make, not overly sweet, and marvelously smooth. But you can use frosting if you prefer. You will have extra whichever route you choose; with pastry cream, you can make cream puffs or fruit tarts. If you're a frosting fan, I guess you can just eat it with a spoon.

3. Fruit. I used raspberries, a kiwi, some mango, and a peach.

4. Chocolate. Rather a lot of it, like possibly most of a bag of nice quality chips.

6. Glaze. Mine required the juice of one lemon, about a quarter cup of brown sugar, and a dash of dark rum. The glaze keeps your cut fruit from browning, so don't skip it.

The hardware:

1. Parchment paper

2. A half-sheet pan (if you're making the cake) and sauce pan (for the pastry cream) and bowls and all that

3. A small biscuit cutter

4. A small sauce pan for the glaze and a brush

5. Surfaces to put your sushi on going in and out of the fridge, and something to cover them with

6. A chocolate-melting apparatus, such as a double-boiler or a dish that sits on a sauce pan

7. A round pastry tip with coupling (pastry tips are cheap to buy individually, fun to use, and they take up almost no storage space so there's no reason you shouldn't have a couple) and a brand-name zip-top bag (the cheap-o ones will burst under the pressure of the cream - this has happened to me; just buy the good bags). Snip the corner from the zip bag and attach your pastry coupling to it.

About This Instructable

Bio:I have worked in costume production and clothing alteration; I taught myself to hand-tailor, draft patterns, and do various other things that facilitate my penchant for making clothing that conforms t...read more »